"In 1991 "Communism" collapsed. The cold war was over and the West had won. Whole cities, Moscow, St Petersburg, Warsaw, Beijing, Budapest and Bucharest, whole countries indeed, were privatised for nothing or next to nothing. This was probably the greatest expansion of the world market in...

This paper examines the introduction of piecework, a key aspect of the Soviet workplace, in occupied East Germany. As elsewhere, its implementation encountered persistent hostility from the workforce. What made this episode different, though, was that this process occurred within a context of...

It is often argued that compulsory memberships in collectives can help to protect inexperienced customers of professional service from faulty work and its consequences: Hence, compulsory memberships serve as a typical tool to reduce the harm from asymmetric information. However, there is always...

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new conditions. This paper examines how the country’s totalitarian character has been upheld through...